[1] This is an appeal against the decision of the Kuala Lumpur High Court delivered on 7 August 2017. The High Court had reversed the decision of the Sessions Court which decision was delivered on 27 October 2016 after a full trial.

[2] This appeal is primarily concerned with the rather contentious issue of the application of the defence of illegality and public policy in relation to an action brought to enforce a trust. When parties in litigation seek to enforce a contract, the illegality defence is sometimes taken, as it was in this action, to deprive the plaintiff of a remedy and perhaps, as this case has shown, reward the defendant with a windfall.

[3] When seeking to establish the illegality defence, reference will invariably be made to the seminal statement of Lord Mansfield CJ in Holman v. Johnson 1 Cowp 341: "No Court will lend its aid to a man who founds his cause of action on an immoral or an illegal act" derived from the Latin maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio. As we shall see, this maxim, which traditionally governed the defence of illegality, became a strict rule of policy with no room for exercise of discretion by the Court.

[4] For two centuries after Lord Mansfie